Pasadena Junior Bears bound for TIFI Super Bowl

Published 6:00 pm, Saturday, December 1, 2001

With the squad staging an impressive scoring drive on its opening series, the Bears, behind the running of Aaron Baker, eliminated the La Porte Cowboys 22-6 in a TIFI Junior Division semifinal contest at Fairmont Junior High's Viking Field Saturday afternoon.

By ROBERT AVERY

Baker rushed for two touchdowns and threw for a third to spark the undefeated Bears to their 11th victory of the season.

"We've got some playmakers," said Bears coach Kevin Smith, whose club will now prepare for this Saturday's TIFI Super Bowl at La Marque High School where they'll face their archrivals, the Deer Park Rams.

The team will be bidding for their third straight Super Bowl crown, having won it as freshmen and sophomores.

If the Bears defense had accumulated any rust from their three-week layoff, they had a funny way of showing it.

La Porte was held to three first downs and 60 total yards of offense. With La Porte only trailing only 14-6 at the half, the Bears defense made sure the Cowboys went nowhere in the second half.

La Porte failed to get a single first down over 11 second-half plays, finishing with zero total yardage.

"We made a couple of big plays that livened them up," said Smith.

Youngsters like Craig Flores, Scott Talton, Travis Fetgatter had big plays early on defense. Talton stopped a potenial tying score when he dragged down a Cowboy ballcarrier from behind after a 27-yard gain. Five plays later, La Porte was turning the ball over on downs.

The Bears offense took some of the pressure off the defense with that productive first series of the game.

The team marched 61 yards in 10 plays, overcoming two five-yard penalties in the process.

"We wanted to score the first time we touched the ball," said Smith.

The big play of the drive was a Baker 43-yard gallop on a fourth down and nine call. The Bears faked the reverse and Baker rolled right and found nothing but daylight all the way to the 10 of La Porte.

The second penalty wiped out a touchdown, but after a 15-yard pass play to the three, Baker punched it in by extending his arm across the goal line.

Quarterback Logan McClure then threw a perfect pass to Nick Kone for a two-point play and an 8-0 lead.

The Bears' only blemish all afternoon was five fumbles. Fortunately, the team lost just one. But that one hurt.

"We knew if we gave them a short field, they had a good chance to score," said Smith.

Sure enough, a Bears fumble deep in their territory led to La Porte's lone score. a 19-yard pass from quarterback Blake Marchal to an all alone Jacob Lozano in the end zone with 45 seconds to play in the half tightened the screws.

La Porte muffed the bid at a tying two-point conversion, but that disappointment would be magnified greatly minutes later.

Not content with sitting on a two-point lead at halftime, the Bears probably came up with the knockout punch on the last play of the half.

After setting up shop at the 50-yard line, the Bears ate up the yardage in two plays. After a run of nine yards, Baker took the ball from McClure and found a sprinting Ben Moody behind La Porte's secondary coverage where Moody hauled in the pass and rambled the remaining distance untouched.

The team made it 16-6 when McClure rolled right and saw Kevin Smith, Jr. in the end zone. By all rights, the pass should have been knocked down or picked off, but the pass deflected off La Porte's Ashton Lee's hands and into Smith's for the two-point catch.

If that score didn't decide the matter, Baker's 47-yard run to paydirt just seconds into the second half did. It wrapped up a 66-yard, three-play drive.